At long last, Sony has determined that is no longer in their best interest to pursue the advancement of the ATRAC codec. After more than a decade of development, it is becoming more and more obvious that market demand and consumer interest in the format is waning. Recently released Sony portable audio devices no longer support it, and now the Connect music store is shutting down and moving away from the codec as well. A Sony Connect Europe press release reports:

To Our Valued Sony CONNECT Customers,

Today Sony announced its intent to move to a Windows Media Technology platform for Walkman® products in the United States, Canada and Europe. We strongly believe that the decision to embrace a more open platform will enable us to provide you with a better music enjoyment experience. As a result of this change, we will be phasing out the CONNECT™ Music Service, based on Sony’s ATRAC audio format, in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008.

All of Sony’s new Walkman music and video devices will be supported by a very wide range of third party services around Europe.

We are fully committed to helping you through this important transition away from a proprietary music service. In the coming weeks and months, we will keep you closely informed of the status of the CONNECT Music Service phase out in your country, and provide you with the best possible guidance on how to successfully transfer your music library to an MP3 or Windows Media-compatible format. Periodic updates will also be posted on the CONNECT music store and on the Sony Europe customer service site, http://support.sony-europe.com

We recommend that you use any outstanding promotional vouchers or account credits prior to March 2008.

Thank you for all your purchases and feedback so far, and for your continued support as we work to complete this transition with as little disruption to you as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Sony CONNECT Europe Team

Click here for further FAQ’s regarding this subject. Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and feelings.

What does this mean for ATRACLife? Well, as mentioned in the forums, our team will move on to a new domain, dubbed Sony Insider. Stay tuned.

We are pleased to release this special full ATRAC Plugin to our beloved userbase. You will now be able to write, and read, all ATRAC files within Sony Media Software. From the words of Dan Kinney, Senior Director of Technology at Sony:

We have built a plug-in for the application from our “Media Software” group. These are apps such as Sound Forge and ACID, which are pretty common in the audio editing community. Support for ATRAC will be included in the next version of ACID (version 6) which is about to ship. Other apps will soon get the functionality as part of an auto-update.

These apps support the new “.aa3” file format definition for ATRAC. This is the definition of audio files using the ATRAC codec without any copy protection or DRM.

Essentially, this is an MP3 file, only using ATRAC for the codec. While it uses ID3v2 tags for its metadata, it also supports an audio header at the beginning of the audio data to describe the bitstream to the playback app or device. This little tweak makes it different enough to make it problematic to use a standard ID3 editor, but trust me…they are ID3 tags. Sonicstage (3.3 and beyond) can support *.aa3. As of the last firmware update (2.5), the PSP is capable of playing back these files.

This plugin has been tested with Sound Forge 8 and Vegas 6 (video editing app). It supports ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus and Advanced Lossless.

Download the ATRAC Plugin here! You must be a registered member of ATRACLife to download. (free, takes under a minute)

Tip: After creating a *.aa3 file, rename the extension of said file to *.omg to allow Sonicstage to put it on your ATRAC-capable device.

Nonetheless, this is compatible with ALL Sony Media apps (Vegas, Vegas+DVD, DVD Architect, Vegas Movie Studio, Vegas Movie Studio+DVD, DVD Architect Studio, ACID, Music Studio, ACIDized, Super Duper Music Looper, Jam Trax, Sony Sound Series, Chopper, Groove Mapping, Groove Cloning, CD Architect, Sound Forge, Audio Studio, Acoustic Mirror, Noise Reduction, Wave 64, Wave Hammer, XFX and more.). Read further for an example of the functionality present with Vegas 5:

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